BRIDGEPORT -- Local basketball legend Charles Bentley was brought out of retirement Tuesday to face perhaps his toughest challenge -- claims he slapped a 14-year-old girl in 2008.

As coach of the Harding High School boys basketball team for 35 years, Bentley guided the Presidents to 651 wins and nine state championships, but it's the court of law he faces now.

Troy Williamson, now 20, claims in a lawsuit that in January 2008, when she was 14, Bentley slapped her in the face during a mediation session in an office on the high school's stage.

"He told me to shut up and then smacked me on the left side of the face with his hand," Williamson testified Tuesday before a Superior Court jury, pretending to slap her lawyer, Josephine Smalls Miller. "It stung for about two minutes. I asked him `Why did you slap me and he said because I said he wouldn't,' " she testified.

Williamson complained to her mother, who notified the principal and police. As a result, Bentley, who was also the dean of students at the time, was suspended for two weeks with pay. He was not arrested.

But Bentley, testifying in his own defense, denied slapping the girl.

"I thought Troy was the sister of one of my players and I asked her what she was doing there, and I put my arm around her and we joked and I told her I didn't want to see her there anymore," he said.

Bentley then demonstrated on his lawyer, Errol Skyers, how he put his arm around the girl and touched her cheek with two fingers.

"We laughed and that was it," he said.

Judge William Rush warned Miller after she asked Bentley whether it was his practice to put his arm around 14-year-old girls and touch their faces.

"Careful," the judge warned her.

Bentley, who is retired and living in Atlanta, said Williamson's mother, Lesha Powell, later called him and he admitted touching her daughter's face and he apologized.

"I told her it wouldn't happen again and I thought that was it," he said.

But Powell testified she and her daughter decided to file the suit because they didn't think the situation was taken seriously by the school board.

Yisha Brown, another student in the mediation room at the time, testified she saw Bentley slap Williamson, but thought it was part of horseplay. She said they were laughing.

And Kenneth Jackson, who was doing the mediation between Brown and Williamson at the time, said he heard Williamson giggle, but had his back turned.

Earlier in the trial Tuesday, Rush granted a motion by Skyers to dismiss Williamson's claims against the Board of Education. Miller did not oppose the motion.

Miller is also representing Carmen Perez Dickson, a city school principal the board is considering firing for allegedly assaulting students.

The six-member jury could begin its deliberations Wednesday afternoon.